DHS allowed migrant to die with slow rescue response, according to whistleblower

A “beef” between two Homeland Security Department supervisors may have contributed to the death of an illegal immigrant and delayed the rescue of a Border Patrol agent who later died, according to a whistleblower complaint.

The whistleblower is one of the two supervisors. He ran Customs and Border Protection’s air unit in Deming, New Mexico. He said a more senior official in El Paso, Texas, regularly blocked his team from making rescue flights and instead deployed a unit farther from the scenes whose pilots lacked knowledge of the terrain.

In July 2020, the whistleblower said, the Deming unit was ready to respond to a migrant’s 911 distress call and figured it could locate the man “within a short period of time.” Instead, higher-ups in El Paso denied the flight and the migrant was found dead a day later.

A month earlier, CBP received a distress call about a Border Patrol agent who was undergoing CPR from fellow agents. The Deming unit was closest, but the whistleblower said El Paso supervisors sent a unit an additional hour away.

By the time the other unit arrived, the agent had died.

The Office of Special Counsel, the federal agency that protects whistleblower rights, revealed those details last week in a public filing that chided CBP for its weak response to the allegations.

The whistleblower, whose name is redacted from the documents, said a CBP pilot flew a helicopter into restricted airspace and almost clipped a cable but wasn’t punished. Helicopters were transporting agents to a gun range for training, even though they could have gone to a range within driving distance.

“Congressional action is a necessity to dismantle this den of corruption and restore accountability,” the whistleblower said in one of several letters to the special counsel.

CBP investigated the allegations and rejected most of them. It acknowledged that the pilot strayed into restricted airspace and was given retraining.

CBP specifically rejected claims that the El Paso supervisor refused to let the Deming Air Unit take off on specific rescue missions.

“The investigation found that each request for air support is evaluated on its own merits with the totality of the circumstances being taken into consideration,” acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said in the agency’s initial response.

In the case of the agent’s death, Mr. Miller said the El Paso supervisor responded correctly and Deming could not have changed the outcome.

Special counsel Hampton Dellinger criticized CBP for running a shoddy investigation that seemed to seek out exculpatory evidence but did not interview those who might have corroborated the whistleblower’s account.

Mr. Dellinger referred the matter to President Biden last week. He said there was “compelling” evidence to back up the whistleblower and that CBP failed to grapple with it.

“I have concluded that the agency’s findings do not appear reasonable,” Mr. Dellinger wrote to Mr. Biden.

CBP investigators eventually interviewed more people, and their accounts included in Mr. Dellinger’s report backed up the whistleblower’s report of tensions between him and higher-ups. They said the tensions did affect decision-making, though they disagreed on the extent.

One agent said some Deming unit requests to launch were denied because of a “beef” and “tension” between the supervisors. He agreed that if allowed to launch, they could have saved lives.

An Air and Marine agent said he did not think Deming was being punished.

The whistleblower accused CBP of “a disturbing level of deception and bias” in its investigations to clear itself of blame in the deaths and the other arrears.

“Rather than be transparent, they choose to use deceptive techniques in an unreasonable attempt to persuade the public that these bad actors did not contribute in the deaths of several persons including a CBP Border Patrol agent and continue to put the public and its own agents in harm’s way,” the retired supervisory air interdiction agent wrote in an official response to CBP’s internal probes.

CBP declined to comment on the record for this report.

Fernando Garcia, founder of the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso, said he wasn’t surprised by the allegations.

“There’s been a historic disregard of protections of migrants who are crossing the border,” he told The Washington Times.

He said the budget for search and rescue is too low and rising border death rates are proof that CBP’s priorities don’t adequately emphasize the lifesaving mission.

Mr. Garcia said he expects the situation to worsen if the incoming Trump administration makes good on its promise of stiffer border enforcement, which the El Paso activist said will push migrants into even riskier crossings.